Archive for the ‘Rants –’ Category

Dael’s Adventure Part 14

Here is a map of the Ziggurat as a visual aid. Every other round the water raised 5 feet, slowly flooding the area. The party started in the large blue squares, Doldrums in the center black square, and the Hexer, Protector, Shadowcaster and Reaper in the other four black squares.

Ziggurat of Doldrums

Did I mention that the Ziggurat had 4 spires, one at each corner, and on these spires four minions. Solei and I were a bit separated from the rest of the party. We started in the NW, while everyone else was to the south. I spotted a hexer and rushed towards her, knowing full well the havoc casters can cause, however I was unable to reach her before she could cast a spell at me. I’ve seen this one before, and steeled myself for an uncontrollable laughing fit, but the joke she chose to empower the spell with was one I’d heard before, so I was able to “kill” it by explaining how the original Elven version was better. It was about a thief who fell from the 4th story stairway, and the guards mentioned that it was his last theft, however in Elven ‘flight’ (as in flight of stairs) and theft sound nearly identical so it was a funny because of word play. However by this time I’d closed and she decided that gravity was safer than me and did her best impression of the thief, stepping off the side of platform. I swiftly slid down after and gave her a few thumps with my staff.

Meanwhile Solei climbed towards the other baddie on the nearby spire and Vyrez and company faced off against a Reaper and Shadowcaster. I did my best to climb up to the next level to the south, but I’m fairly certain everyone was to busy to see my first attempt fail disastrously. On my second try rather then going for climbing, I jumped off the back wall and then up. Did I mention that the water was steadily rising? By this point the lowest level of the ziggurat was completely flooded. Climbing the tower was tiring work, but I did make my way up to were Doldrums had been directing the battle. She was a worthy opponent, and was able to deflect many of my blows that would otherwise have connected. Solei was doing well against the protector until Doldrums called on the water to push her away. Vyrez, Hubert and Mortia were having some difficulty with the other two. Vyrez managed to get up a level but the other two were stuck treading water.

The Protector was trying to protect Doldrums, but he should have tried to protect himself. A few blows to unprotected pressure points left him paralyzed on the ground and I was able to get in send a dozen blows reigns upon Doldrums, a few of which even connected. Solei meanwhile had Misty Stepped back, though she overstepped a little and ended up in the water. Mortia who had been enwrapped by watery tentacles managed to break free. Doldrums shadow jaunted away from me again, forcing me to leap back and forth around the ziggurat in a most unbecoming manner (jumping has never been my strong suite).

Hubert was surrounded but cast some sort of protective magic making it difficult for the Reaper and Shadowcrafter to even attempt to attack him. I found out at this point that there were elemental sharks in the water, I managed to dodge and grab onto one, though once it realized it was pulling me where I wanted to go it dispersed. However it was enough that I could make it up the Northwest spire again and close with Doldrums, again landing fewer blows than I should. Now Vyrez was entangled by the water tentacles, and threatened by the Reaper, so when yet again Doldrums Shadow Jaunted away from me, I made the much shorter trip back and finished off the Reaper. During all of this Solei had achieved the central summit and began flinging magical bolts at Doldrums, finally finishing her off.

The water and ziggurat receded, and in it’s wake the entire Red Light district was revealed to be gone. Worse, the rest of the city was on fire. The smell was disturbingly delicious. As we made our way towards the clock tower Hubert discovered the Manticore, which apparently got wounded sometime in the interim since we last saw it. He was able to heal it some and gain it’s trust, though it’s wings will probably take some serious magic to be fully healed. Once we got closer to the clock tower, we tried to disguise ourselves as “on fire” people… and while I knew the plan wouldn’t work, I didn’t want to say it was because I had doubts about most of their acting ability. It turns out my hunch was born out, as only Solei and myself went unnoticed, and the others where ushered inside by the guards. Solei and I then decided to try and sneak in, there were a couple of the exploding ninjas and Solei tried to convince them that we should be on the other side of the door, while behind their backs I picked the lock and strolled inside. The two guards “escorted” us inside … though really they were just following us. It was at this point that the four Diviners we’d defeated appeared, though something wasn’t quite right. When their mouths opened their heads split open, and fire began spewing forth it was obvious. In seconds as we sought cover, the rest of their bodies melted, leaving only a flying flaming skulls (well 4 of them!)

The high school is finished, and with the arrival of a teacher from the mainland we already have two students enrolled. The middle school also only has two students so far, but the next generation well be all smartenated up and full of learning. There has been some concern about the Blimp Ride being right next door to the schools, but we assured the parents the blimps used Helium and wouldn’t explode. I’ve got someone checking to make sure the Blimps DO use Helium, and if not, how expensive it would be to switch.

March ’62

Both schools are now nearly full, and the teachers have been assured that the blimps use totally safe Hydrogen. Fortunately since practically none of them have even an elementary education we have at least a generation to fix the issue… as long as the blimp doesn’t explode in the meantime. Tourists do keep coming to the island, even though our touristy locations are pretty minimal still.

January ’63

Our fourth mansion is finished, the second one to go up in our “historic fort district”. I’d hoped to build some nice touristy attractions here, but it is so hard staying in the black when we have to keep importing goods to process and send elsewhere. Such a pain as there is always new expansion which needs to happen I keep spending the money like it’s nothing.

May ’63

Yet again a freight has arrived with goods we can’t afford to pay for… Rather than wait possibly months for foreign aid we’ve decided to print some money. This will cause inflation, but if we can stay in the black I think it’ll be reasonable, and ultimately we just need to get to 40 factory workers to fulfill my contract with the American CEO and then I can move on to a better island! I should probably start padding my Swiss account while I’m at it, as We’ve already got half of the needed factory workers.

November ’63

Almost managed to keep in the black, but we decided to build some nice housing, specifically 3 condominiums in the harbor district. And of course project costs exceeded expectations almost immediately, not 2 weeks later and we’re back in the red again. I may just have to print some more money when right before the next freighter arrives. I mean we’re over 75% of the way to my goal… and then the massive inflation will be someone else’s problem right? What could go wrong.

January ’64

Ah ha! We did not even need to do another print run of money, the latest freighter brought in enough cash that we were able to hire a half dozen people to the newly completed weapons factory. Congratulations me!

So I’ve got Amazon Prime which is nice and all for videos, except SOOOO many of the shows on there the latest season must be purchased to watch. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Netflix, or maybe it’s being used to getting stuff from the library for free, but I just can’t stomach paying twice for something, especially if it’s digital both times. I guess it falls into the same boat for me as Hulu’s “Ad Free” tier having some shows that still have ads. Sure, I get that they have contracts on those shows and the alternative would be to make those shows unavailable which isn’t really a good either.

And of course it’s all the more painful when after spending 10 minutes flipping around trying to figure out what I want to watch it turns out the thing I’ve selected isn’t available (well… it is available for an additional $29.99 or whatever). I’m already paying $8+ a year for your service. I do kind of wish there was an option to only show me what’s available. Maybe I should stick to just buying physical copies (hey, I can still watch ’em when the internet’s out!) and borrowing stuff from the library. It’d certainly be cheaper.

State of the Blog

So it’s time to resurrect the blog, starting tomorrow (Friday) I’m going to try and get back into the 5 posts a week rhythm. I’m going to change the format up a little however as it’s been four years!

Mondays will remain Let’s Play… I’m thinking X-Com 2, but I’m open to suggestions, and I’ll need at least a week to actually figure out what I’m doing if it’s not going to be a very short campaign.

Board Game reviews will remain on Tuesdays… though I might focus more on my favorite games, with occasional worst or new games as an infrequent occurrence as opposed to my previous “whatever was on the table” approach.

Media Reviews will probably go away, or possibly be used as filler when I’m behind on a regular feature. Instead Wednesdays are going to be a hobby focus. I’ve been gluing metal and plastic together for more than a decade and know a thing about a thing.

Thursdays will remain “Rant” day where I talk about whatever.

Fridays are going to be a new feature “Meet the Cult” where I take a day each week to focus on one of the many otherwise unremarkables who have devoted themselves to my Warhammer 40k cult of Slaanesh. Usually you hear about the backstory of the movers and shakers, which often becomes a bit of Mary-Sueism. So of the conversions I’ve done have been quite fun and I already have bits of story about these guys in my head so I’m going to flesh it out. You might learn a little bit about the big name characters in my 40k/AoS Slaanesh army by extension, but that won’t be the focus.

Choose Your Own Post unless there is popular demand, CYOP is going on indefinite hiatus. Once I get my writing chops back I may work on it as a separate project or something.

Well… today WOULD have been the second day in two weeks where I could sleep in. Like, turn off my alarm clock entirely (I actually set it for noon), and just as sleep as long as my body would let me.

Nope. Of course not. One of my new roommate’s friends is over here banging around, shouting and making noise at 9:30am. So drunk my roommate fled into the house and locked the door, and then called the police when this guy drove off.

On the bright side I got some painting done while watching Killing them Softly and Hitchcock. Nice. I forgot how much I like Hitchcock’s work, so a biography was pretty excellent. Then we played some Dungeon World at the game store.

Still, no pictures, because I’m lame. Maybe I’ll remember tomorrow. However the magnets I use are rare earth magnets. We actually carry them at FNG for exactly this purpose, though I did pick up some from Think Geek before they became popular for use in minis. The ones I use are 1/8″x1/16″ discs. I am careful to always check magnets against previously assembled pieces so that the polarity matches up. Pretty much every model I have that uses a flying base now has a magnet in it, whether it’s a Battle Fleet Gothic Eldar ship, Tau Gun Drone, eldar Jetbike or whatever. The smaller ones are just a little too tiny I’ve found. Though I have seen folks only who have used two of the 16x32ers.

I don’t know. Today was good though. We switched servers yesterday, and today I got basically everything flipped and set up right. Still have a little bit of electronic housework, but everything is working now. Some of the highlights of the server move:

* Every event in our meeting room calendar being shifted by 3 hours due to a hack in the software designed to counteract a weird setting on the old server. Hack removed, everything is perfect now.

* WordPress no longer stuck on Latin charset, but shift to UTF-8 changed lots of characters in whacky ways. Search & replace is my friend, but it can be a little daunting when 6k+ changes are made.

* Email is still a little weird, but it all works and people really will have to dig to find the weirdness.

* Test server is go (and basically all good).

So tomorrow I can get back to actually updating the frontpage, putting in the calendar (basically the boring once a week, once a month stuff) and maybe next week I can get back to working on the fancy site overhaul that keeps getting pushed back for more important things.

For great success. I’m going to try and start this horse back up again. It’s been a while, and I’ve let it malinger. Apparently structure isn’t what I need. Habit, repetition. So yeah I’m going to start trying to write here every day. Of course, this is only a few weeks before GenCon, so almost immediately upon starting I’ll be taking a break but we’ll see if I can’t start again AND make some interesting posts or something.

Well, the interesting posts will have to start tomorrow. For now all I can tell you is today I got some Tetris socks.